PHI-10011 - Module Specification
School of Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2024/25

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

N/A

Description for 2024/25

This module is designed to develop and improve skills to enable students to understand and respond appropriately to arguments in general, by focussing on the formal features of arguments such as deductive validity, inductive force and various forms of fallacies. This is crucial preparation for all other courses in the Philosophy Programme, but is also excellent preparation for academic work generally or any endeavour that involves an attempt to convince someone of something.

1) To guide development in a range of elementary thinking and reasoning skills and to provide students with the basics of skills that are essential for the proper presentation, analysis and criticism of arguments.
2) To improve students general ability to think both clearly and rigorously.
3) To enhance students ability to identify, present, analyse and critically evaluate arguments presented in everyday and academic contexts.
4) To enhance students ability to identify various common fallacies and rhetorical devices.
5) To equip students with the basics of skills that are of paramount importance in philosophy but which are also an indispensable part of good practice in any academic discipline, by introducing them to the basic principles of argument and logic.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Demonstrate precision of thought and expression in the analysis and formulation of complex and controversial problems: 1,2
Evaluate opposing arguments, to formulate and consider the best arguments for different views and to identify the weakest elements of the most persuasive view: 2
Employ some key logical concepts such as logical form, validity, soundness, induction and quantification: 1,2
Apply philosophical skills and techniques to issues arising outside the academy: 1,2
Identify underlying issues in a wide range of different kinds of debate: 2
Demonstrate clarity and rigour in the critical assessment of arguments presented in texts: 2
Recognise methodological errors, rhetorical devices, unexamined conventional wisdom, unnoticed assumptions, vagueness and superficiality in the arguments of others and respond appropriately: 2
Abstract, analyse and construct sound arguments and to identify logical fallacies: 1

Study hours

10 hours lectures
10 hours seminars
45 hours preparation for lectures
50 hours preparation for seminars (including 10 hours knowledge check by use of correct answers to seminar exercises posted online after each seminar)
10 hours preparation for the proof and formalisation exercises (including 3 hours knowledge check by use of correct answers to seminar exercises posted online after each seminar)
25 hours revision for the final exercise (including 7 hours hours knowledge check by use of correct answers to seminar exercises posted online after each seminar)

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment